


'Lucifer's topside, easy as that'

by themegalosaurus



Series: SPN episode codas [12]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, Episode: s11e14 The Vessel, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester, Lucifer's Cage, Season/Series 11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2019-09-06 16:51:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16836643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themegalosaurus/pseuds/themegalosaurus
Summary: Coda to 11x14, 'The Vessel'. Sam struggles with the implications of Lucifer's release.





	'Lucifer's topside, easy as that'

What Sam can’t let himself think about though is the fact that Lucifer’s topside, easy as that. One word of foolish, well-meant acquiescence from Cas and everything that Sam did to put the Devil away becomes worthless, pointless, so much wasted labour and pain. Sam’s still fucked-up from Hell. It’s with him, every day. It’s there in the nightmares and the reality slips and the lingering fear of the dark. It’s there, always, in the way that Dean sees him: after soullessness and Sam’s spell on the inpatients’ ward, Dean’s never quite trusted Sam not to stumble sideways into psychosis, not to let him down. Most of all, it’s there in the way that everything up here feels washed-out, distant, meaningless paper-thin besides the long dark decades of torture that have made up most of Sam’s existence (so much of it, so long). 

Sam was torn apart for hundreds of years in the pit, and what was the point of it? Why did it happen at all? He can’t. He can’t think about it, because if he starts to let it in, it’s gonna crawl its way on insect feet right down into his brain. He won’t be able to see any more. He won’t be able to breathe. 

The thing is. The thing is, that if what Sam did didn’t actually save the world, then he has to think about what happened not as an action that he chose to take, but as something that happened _to_ _him_. And either he deserved to suffer what he suffered in the service of no genuine goal; or he didn’t deserve it, and if he admits that… he doesn’t think he can stand to believe in a world so viciously arbitrary and unfair. Hell, Sam’s penance, the saving of the world: it’s the last anchor, dark and heavy and horrible, but an anchor nonetheless. And now it’s been cut loose. Sam’s afraid that if he starts to think about it, he’ll go adrift and he might never come back.


End file.
